Suit settled by Navy over sonar exercises

HONOLULU 
HONOLULU – The Navy has settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenging its use of sonar in hundreds of submarine-hunting exercises around the world.

The Navy said yesterday that the deal reached with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups requires it to continue to research how sonar affects whales and other marine mammals. It doesn't require sailors to adopt additional measures to protect the animals when they use sonar.

The agreement comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Navy in another sonar lawsuit the NRDC had filed.

“The Navy is pleased that after more than three years of extensive litigation, this matter has been brought to an end on favorable terms,” Frank R. Jimenez, the Navy's general counsel, said in a statement.

NRDC officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment. The plaintiffs asked the judge to dismiss the case Friday.

The NRDC and five other plaintiffs – the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cetacean Society International, League for Coastal Protection, Ocean Futures Society and Jean-Michel Cousteau – filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Central District of California on Oct. 19, 2005.

The complaint sought a court order to curb mid-frequency sonar, the Navy's preferred method for detecting enemy submarines, on the grounds that the sonar disturbs and sometimes kills whales and dolphins.

The Navy said the lawsuit was amended twice so that it challenged its use of sonar in 370 specific training and testing activities around the world.

In the years since, federal courts in California and Hawaii ruled in favor of the NRDC and other environmental groups and ordered the Navy to restrict its use of sonar to protect the animals.

But last month, in a ruling on a NRDC lawsuit challenging the Navy's sonar training exercises off Southern California, the Supreme Court ruled that military training trumps whale protection.

The Navy said the settlement, which was reached Friday, calls on it to spend $14.75 million over three years on marine mammal research topics of interest to both the Navy and the plaintiffs.